The field of the present disclosure relates to catheters and sheaths to be used in intraluminal medical procedures.
Intraluminal procedures often involve delivery of an expandable device such a stent or plug to an area within a body passage. These expandable devices are frequently delivered within sheaths which are advanced over wire guides to the target area. However, delivery sheaths can have a relatively large diameter while intraluminal passages can be relatively narrow. Furthermore, wide sheaths advancing over narrow wire guides often have difficulty tracking on the wire guide as it curves through tortuous curvature.
What is needed is a delivery sheath with a small, tapered, distal tip which can track well on a wire guide through tortuous curvature and penetrate narrow portions of an intraluminal passage. The distal tip of this delivery sheath may then be expandable so that the expandable device therein may pass through the distal end of the sheath to be deployed. It is further desirable that once the device has been deployed, that the distal tip of the sheath return to its small tapered configuration to prevent complications during retraction of the delivery sheath.